Three warning shots being fired into the water is standard maritime procedure for sending a definitive signal that a vessel needs to leave the immediate area.
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In January, Iran detained 10 United States sailors at gunpoint after they ended up in Iranian waters.
USA and Iranian navies in the Persian Gulf have long eyed each other warily, despite diplomatic efforts between the two countries. “It’s very common for them to come up to within 300, 500 yards of us, and then they’ll turn, or parallel us and stop”, he said.
The USS Squall and the USS Tempest, two American coastal patrol ships, were transiting the Persian Gulf on Wednesday, when the US said an Iranian vessel harassed the ships. Tempest sounded five short blasts from the ship’s whistle, indicating the maneuvers were unsafe, and attempted to establish radio communications, apparently without success.
Later that same day Tempest and Squall were harassed by an Iranian Naser-class patrol boat, of a type known to be operated by the Guards. Bill Urban, a spokesman for the US Navy’s Central Command (NAVCENT) in Bahrain.
In December, Iranian missile boats fired a burst of unguided rockets near a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
Earlier in the day, the Squall and Tempest encountered three other small Iranian boats that ran in front of them three times, coming as close as 600 yards. “No one was injured or hit by the warning shots”, he said. The Nitze altered course away from the approaching Iranian vessels.
The four IRGC vessels approached at high speed.
Urban also revealed that on August 15, seven IRGCN vessels conducted a rocket firing exercise “in close proximity” to the destroyer Nitze and the Tempest in worldwide waters in the central Gulf.
Earlier this week, the State Department put out a new travel warning to American citizens warning them about “the risk of arrest and detention of US citizens” by Iran. U.S. officials say the Iranians were acting in an unprofessional and unsafe manner in that instance as well. “We certainly hope it doesn’t continue because it serves no objective other than to raise tensions in an important part of the world-tensions that we don’t seek to have escalated”, Mr. Cook said.
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Urban added the same Iranian ship which approached the Tempest later crossed the bow, or sailed through the path of, the guided-missile destroyer USS Stout, three times. As provocative as the actions of the Iranian vessels were, they did not seem important enough for the “Big Three” network news outlet who didn’t report about the engagement at all, Thursday evening.
